ask the expert
Think long term
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BY CHRISTOPHER HOSFORD complex distribution channels and need
THERE ARE MULTIPLE steps in manag- to optimize lead management and direct
ing sales leads, such as qualifying leads to the right reseller at the right time.
prospects, sending them what “We invest a lot of money in procuring
they request(fulfillment), getting saleson leads for our network,” said Jim Quinly,
board with a willingness to report VP-marketing and business development
results, analyzing success and failure, at ThyssenKrupp Accessibility (TKA),
andreallocatingresources. which sells home elevators primarily
Soundeasy?Farfromit. throughresellers.“Therearenotaninfinite
“The marketing function is often number of dealers out there. They’re my
well-defined, but political issues get in channel partners. I need their feedback,
the way,” said Mark Friedman, a partner and I need to know if it’s working or not.”
at Cerius Consulting Group. “Marketing This process is a two-way street,
can say they generated, say, 1,000 leads Quinly said.
last month, but sales will claim those “Without feedback from sales, you’re
leads are just tire-kickers. If you can’t de- in a fog,” he added. “The numbers aren’t
termine the value of the qualifica- tion function, all bets are off.” “Without feedback
Two trends appear to be im- from sales, you’re
proving lead-management analy- sis and efficiency: lead scoring in a fog.”
and automation. Jim Quinly,
Lead scoring is a system where-
VP-marketing and business development,
by points are assigned to a prospect rather than designating ThyssenKrupp Accessibility the prospect “warm” or “hot” anecdotal- relating to anything. It’s essential [that] ly. Someone who elects to fill out a Web we have that feedback from the resellers. form, for example, might get more points It affects our business as well as theirs.” than one who responds to TV spots—and TKA uses a lead management system certainly more than names on a purchased from Ad Track Corp., which scores leads, list. Scores can go up or down depending evaluates their sources, distributes them on intent to purchase, time frame or input to the sales channel and analyzes success. from sales after a contact. The process also boosts efficiency: Three
“We’re seeing lead scoring more and years ago, prior to automation, Quinly more,” said Mike Emerson, chief market- was able to process 5,000 leads a year. In ing officer at Aprimo Inc., a marketing 2007, he anticipated moving 33,000
technology and consulting company. leads. Reports pinpoint his most effective “Clients who have installed these systems marketing programs so he can shift dol-have formal ways to categorize the poten- lars in those directions. tial value of leads and the products “People love lead scoring because it’s they’re interested in, and can distribute working,” said Thor Johnson, senior VP them to sales in a rigorous fashion.” at Eloqua Corp., a marketing services
This is particularly important, Emer- company. son said, when b-to-b companies have Eloqua surveyed its customers both
before and after implementing a lead-scoring system, using Eloqua’s technology combined with the companies’ own CRM systems. Sources included advertising, trade shows, search engine optimization, public relations, direct mail and e-mail.
Following the implementation of its lead-scoring process, Eloqua’s close ratios jumped 30.5%; revenue per closed deal rose 17%; and total company revenue went up 17.8%.
Curiously, the number of sales leads dropped 23%.
“You may have fewer leads passed along to sales, but they’re better ones with higher value,” Johnson said. “And sales will be spending less time on bad leads.”
If marketing wants to push more leads into the funnel, it can always use looser scoring criteria or designate lower point thresholds.
“What we’ve found is that automation is the holy grail,” said Alisa Barber, director of lead generation at eFunds Corp., a payment services company for banks. EFunds uses the Sage SalesLogix CRM system to funnel and manage leads to its 35 in-house salespeople, focusing primarily on the needs of smaller community banks and credit unions in the U.S.
Barber said the crafting of qualifying questions is vital. Often, she said, prospects “don’t know what products they want, but they know their needs,” so Web questionnaires are created with this in mind. Sales contacts the prospect within 48 hours and continues the relationship monthly. Educational webinars help nurture the leads, and everyone signing up gets more qualifying questions.
All agree on the value of a strong acceptance rate by sales of the leads given to them.
“If you have that basis of trust and have the feedback from the sales organization, you can see what needs to be changed,” Friedman said. He added that 80% of all leads delivered to sales aren’t followed up on; improving this single metric is a key goal of any lead management system, he added.
BY CHRISTOPHER HOSFORD
TONY JAROS IS VP-research at SiriusDecisions Inc. in Wilton, Conn. BtoB asked Jaros about trends in gauging the effectiveness of marketing promotions and campaigns.
BtoB: How is the concept of promotion effectiveness characterized in the b-to-b space?
Jaros: It’s certainly not as cut and dried as in the b-to-c world, where you can run a regional ad and measure the uptick in sales in that region almost immediately. In b-to-b, the first hand-raiser hardly ever leads to a purchase. Numerous marketing touches are often necessary to even generate a worthwhile lead. Thus, you can’t think about how one campaign leads to revenue but rather how that campaign works with others in a portfolio to generate qualified interest, leads and opportunities.
BtoB: So promotion effectiveness depends on excellent nurturing?
Jaros: Quite a bit. Field marketing begins the demand-creation process to drive hand-raisers, most of whom aren’t qualified or ready even for inside sales/teleprospect-ing attention. You need a process to “gate” a set of leads that will continue to be nurtured within marketing until they reach a certain score, usually based on demographics, activity and BANT [budget, authority, need and time-line information].
BtoB: It sounds complex.
Jaros: It is. It requires significant collaboration `between sales and marketing to understand what types of leads sales are willing to work on, what handoff processes will look like, how disqualified leads can be recycled back to marketing for further nurturing and how performance will be measured. Marketers who try to push every hand-raiser they generate into sales for sales itself to qualify will find much of their output wasted, ignored or incorrectly disqualified.
BtoB: What are the major barriers to effective campaigns today?
Jaros: Improper targeting and messaging, and lots of vendors competing for very little mind share. The average b-to-b executive receives more than 1,000 solicitations per year. You need to target them with precision, link to business issues and position yourself as one of their top two or three priorities in a given year. If you fail to do this, you can forget about driving qualified interest that will convert into an opportunity and hopefully to close.
Watkinschoosesautomationtoheatupleads
BY CHRISTOPHER HOSFORD
WATKINS Manufacturing Corp., the Vista, Calif.-based maker of the Hot Spring Spas brand of hot tubs, faced a classic b-to-b challenge in dealing case study with its vast array of retailers:
keeping the sales chain filled with qualified leads while, at the same time, monitoring how well those leads panned out and its marketing dollars paid off.
At Watkins, responses to advertising generate the leads that are handed off to retailers. But according to Susan Strible, Hot Spring
brand manager, the company received follow-up reports on only about 30% of these leads, providing the company scant intelligence about which marketing tactics worked, which didn’t and how leads were being nurtured once they were in the sales funnel.
Startlingly, dealers often weren’t even following up on leads they were given.
“It was a challenge, doing all these advertising programs and gathering all these leads, plowing them through to your resellers; but then, [to] have them just sit on them,” Strible said.
With input from James W. Obermayer of Sales Leakage Consulting, Strible opted for automation. All Watkins’ consumer lead information from different media sources was funneled to AdTrack Corp.’s lead-management system, which distributed leads to the Hot Spring resellers based on ZIP codes.
Ad Track also fulfills requests for Hot Spring brochures and sends follow-up e-mail or customized postcards on behalf of dealers that sign up for the service. Finally, AdTrack trains Hot Spring dealers in the lead-management process and provides them with an easy way to report their
results. This information feeds reporting tools that help calculate conversion rates and other key metrics.
“The system simplifies how dealers report the status of the leads and determines if they engaged with the prospects, sold a spa, lost the sale to another manufacturer or if the prospect simply lost interest,” Strible said. “From this we can make simple calculations about sales and the effectiveness of particular media.”
Enhanced reporting captured the source of the company’s strongest leads, allowing budgeted monies to
be shifted in that direction; for example, the company discovered (counterintuitively) that advertising on the National Geographic Channel returned faster and more frequent sales than home and garden shows. Those prospects attracted by Internet ads are considered more proactive and are fast-tracked, while leads from more passive media experiences, such as cable TV, are nurtured for as long as two years.
As a result of the new program at Watkins, Strible said, sales conversion has steadily increased each year and is now about 2% to 3% higher than when the program began. And from a mere 30% reporting rate on leads previously, Watkins today gains feedback from its resellers on 90% of its hot tub prospects.
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